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To Save the Economy, We Need to Stop Saving

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Daniel Gross - Mar. 16 (Opinion) - As consumers hibernate and investors hoard cash, the economy is withering. This new age of thrift is understandable. But for a recovery to take hold, Americans will need to start taking risks again.

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The Big Takeover

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Rolling Stone - By Matt Taibbi - Mar. 22 (Opinion) - People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.

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The Rise And Fall Of AIG's Financial Products Unit

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Talking Points Memo - By Zachary Roth - Mar. 20 (News Analysis) - How and when did AIG Financial Products get started? Who ran it, and from where? How did it get into credit default swaps, and what exactly are they, anyway? And how did this group of derivatives traders eventually wind up bringing down one of the most admired financial firms in the world?

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AIG is chump change -- let's find corporate America's hidden billions

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Joe Conason - Mar. 23 (Opinion) - From the jaded perspective of the financiers, the uproar over the AIG bonuses may provide a welcome distraction from far more important (and lucrative) abuses in the world's offshore tax havens. So rather than continue arguing over chump change, it is long past time for the United States, with its international friends and allies, to demand accountability from the long list of tiny countries and principalities, from Andorra and the Cayman Islands to Singapore and Switzerland, where corporations, wealthy clients and unrepentant evildoers hide their assets.

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The Revenge of Karl Marx

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Christopher Hitchens - Mar. 20 (Opinion) - Marx did not believe in the existence of any such organism as “the economy.” What he postulated, and what made him different from any previous theorist of materialism whether historical or dialectical, was a sharp distinction between the forces and the relations of production.

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Dollar Crisis In The Making, Part 3

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Asia Times - By W Joseph Stroupe - Mar. 18 (Special Report) - There is mounting evidence that China's central bank is undertaking the process of divesting itself of longer-dated US Treasuries in favor of shorter-dated ones.

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Scenes from the recession

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Boston Globe - By Alan Taylor - Mar. 20 (Special Report) - The state of our global economy: foreclosures, evictions, bankruptcies, layoffs, abandoned projects, and the people and industries caught in the middle. It can be difficult to capture financial pressures in photographs, but here a few recent glimpses into some of the places and lives affected by what some are calling the "Great Recession". (35 photos total)

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The ongoing problems of "stimulust"

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Phil Levy - Mar. 17 (Opinion) - It was not hard to predict that an Obama administration's skeptical approach to trade could cause international tension. But who ever would have thought we'd be berating Europe over insufficient enthusiasm for domestic spending?

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Detainee reporting was pivitol for the war against Al-Qa'ida (2005)

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

60 Minutes - By Scott Pelley, Ben Bernanke - Mar. 16 (Special Report) - In a rare interview with a sitting Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke tells Scott Pelley what went wrong with America's financial system, how it caused the economic crisis, what the Fed is doing to help fix it and when he expects the recession to end.

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A World of Trouble

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - Mar. 16 (Special Report) - A more troubling chapter of the rapidly deteriorating global economic crisis is playing out quietly in dark corners — and crowded fast food joints — across Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and beyond.

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Meet the Canadian whose big idea felled Wall Street

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Toronto Star - By Cathal Kelly - Mar. 18 (Special Report) - Li's model sidestepped the problem of trying to correlate all the variables that determine risk. Instead, it based its assumptions on the historical dips and swells of the market itself. In essence, Li used the past to map the future.

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Global Meltdown: Human Fallout

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Link TV - Mar. 20 (News Analysis) - (Global Pulse: March 19, 2009) As the waves of the financial meltdown pound banks and governments, the human cost is easily lost in the background. From layoffs to shattered dreams, the global crisis becomes a personal crisis. Do we really see how deeply it reaches into the global community? Sources: Al Jazeera English, Qatar; CNN, U.S.; Deutsche Welle, Germany; South Asia Newsline, India; Russia Today, Russia; KBS, South Korea

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Why Covering AIG Is So Hard

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

National Public Radio - By Adam Davidson - Mar. 19 (Opinion) - the AIG bonus story: that falls under the heading: "Something You Should Be Outraged About And Are, But, Maybe, You Should Focus On Other Things Instead."

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Finance minister gather ahead of the G20 summit in April

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Mar. 16 (News Analysis) - At least there is no danger of interminable drift when leaders of the Group of 20 gather in London next month to address the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. They have set themselves just one day, April 2nd, to do what their predecessors failed to accomplish in weeks: tackle the crisis and consider ways to remake the rules of finance. And on Saturday March 14th G20 finance ministers and central bank governors attending a preparatory meeting in London may well attempt to limit expectations. More pressingly, they will have to heal an awkward sense of transatlantic disunity that has emerged in the run-up to the meeting.

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Does America Face the Risk of a Fascist Backlash?

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Robert Freeman - Mar. 19 (Editorial) - The failure of right wing policy and leadership over the past eight years, especially in matters economic, is comparable to Germany's right-wing failure in World War I. It is catastrophic, undeniable, and complete.

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Should fiscal stimulus packages be coordinated in times of crisis?

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

eurointelligence.com - By Ansgar Belke - Mar. 18 (Opinion) - The Merkel government has even been accused by some of displaying a free-rider behaviour in the area of fiscal policy since it was more reluctant in pushing forward large fiscal rescue packages in the fight against the crisis than its Euro area counterparts with partly higher debt burdens and often higher fiscal deficits and appeared less prone to European coordinated efforts. The same argument was more recently used by the US government to blame the EU for a lack of fiscal policy support and coordination. But is this negative assessment really justified?

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House Passes Bill to Punish A.I.G. Bonus Recipients

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By David Stout - Mar. 20 (News Report) - Spurred on by a tidal wave of public anger over bonuses paid to executives of the foundering American International Group, the House voted 328 to 93 on Thursday to get back most of the money by levying a 90 percent tax on it. The measure easily surpassed a procedural hurdle requiring a two-thirds majority vote, thanks to considerable Republican support. The Senate will consider a roughly similar measure, perhaps next week. If something is approved in that chamber the House and Senate versions would have to be reconciled, so prospects for final passage of a bill are unclear. But there was no doubt after the House vote that the lawmakers were keenly aware of their constituents’ anger, which was focused on A.I.G., although the House measure would apply to executives of any company getting more than $5 billion in federal bailout money.

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Not Insane

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New Yorker - By Hendrik Hertzberg - Mar. 22 (Opinion) - If the economic crisis necessitates a second stimulus—and it probably will—then a payroll-tax holiday deserves a look. But it’s only half a good idea. A whole good idea would be to make a payroll-tax holiday the first step in an orderly transition to scrapping the payroll tax altogether and replacing the lost revenue with a package of levies on things that, unlike jobs, we want less rather than more of—things like pollution, carbon emissions, oil imports, inefficient use of energy and natural resources, and excessive consumption.

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UBS: A Swiss Bank's Shadowy Operations

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Evan Thomas, Mark Hosenball - Mar. 19 (Special Report) - According to a recent U.S. Senate investigation, a single Swiss bank—the biggest, UBS—holds the secret bank accounts of 46,000 Americans, worth an estimated $18 billion. Lately, the Feds have tried to crack down on these rich Americans as tax evaders (generally, the depositors do not pay any taxes on the income from these accounts). The Swiss, not surprisingly, have been resisting. For more than three centuries, Swiss bank secrecy has offered safe haven to the wealthy, some of them unsavory types—Nazis, dictators such as Saddam Hussein and, allegedly, Islamic terrorists. At a time when the rich are coming under close and unsympathetic scrutiny, the details starting to come out about the way the Swiss banking game is played are eye-popping, if not infuriating. Judging from documents and testimony examined by NEWSWEEK, Swiss bankers, like spies, practice what is known in the espionage business as tradecraft—elaborate and often clever steps to evade detection. Last month UBS issued a statement saying, "UBS sincerely regrets the compliance failures in its U.S. cross-border business that have been identified by the various government investigations in Switzerland and the U.S., as well as our own internal review." Translation: the Swiss bank was running a shadowy operation to help rich Americans get their money out of the country, and sometimes back in, without the Feds finding out.

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Economists agree: Print. Money. Now.

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Andrew Leonard - Mar. 21 (News Analysis) - It is no secret that economists Tyler Cowen and Paul Krugman have profound differences on the proper role of how government should manage the economy. Over the course of the ongoing economic crisis, they've engaged in an enlightening debate about such topics as the effectiveness of Keynesian fiscal stimulus policies via their respective blogs and New York Times columns. The libertarian-minded Cowen is a fiscal stimulus skeptic; Krugman, notoriously, is not.

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Thank God America Isn't Like Europe -- Yet

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Charles Murray - Mar. 22 (Opinion) - Do we want the United States to be like Europe? The European model has worked in many ways. I am delighted whenever I get a chance to go to Stockholm or Amsterdam, not to mention Rome or Paris. There's a lot to like -- a lot to love -- about day-to-day life in Europe. But I argue that the answer to this question is "no." Not for economic reasons. I want to focus on another problem with the European model: namely, that it drains too much of the life from life.

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An unprecedented abyss of economic and social turmoil

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Bill Moyers Journal - By Bill Moyers, Mike Davis - Mar. 23 (Interview) - Once a meat cutter and a long haul truck driver, nowadays, Mike Davis teaches creative writing at the University of California, Riverside. This recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" has written so many books we can barely get them on the screen for you. Two of his histories of Los Angeles and Southern California, 'City of Quartz' and 'Ecology of Fear' were best-sellers. His latest: 'In Praise of Barbarians: Essays Against Empire.' Mike Davis, welcome to the JOURNAL. MIKE DAVIS: My pleasure, Bill. BILL MOYERS: Did you ever in your life imagine that America's financial system would become insolvent or that our way of life would be in such a sudden freefall? MIKE DAVIS: No. And I found myself in the position of, say, a Jehovah's Witness, who, of course, believes the end is nigh but then one morning wakes up, looks out the window, and the stars are falling from heaven. It's actually happened. Of course, people a lot like myself are famous for I think the phrase is we predicted eleven out of the last three depressions. So, no. BILL MOYERS: But I do think this time most everyone would agree with what you how you've described what we're going through as the mother of all fiscal crisis. Do you have a sense of the people you know being frightened right now? MIKE DAVIS: Oh, people are terrified, particularly where I teach in Riverside County. People have no idea you know, where to turn. UC Riverside is the largest percentage of working-class students in the UC system. And their families have scrimped and saved. And they've worked hard to get into courses that pointed toward stable careers and jobs. And now those futures are incinerated. What kind of choice do you make? You know, what do you study?

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Would an AIG-Bonus Tax Pass Constitutional Muster?

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Ashby Jones - Mar. 18 (Opinion) - Tribe: I do think Congress (and the Executive Branch) could avoid serious Bill of Attainder problems by passing a sufficiently broad law … rather than targeting a closed class of named executives even though the prohibition against Bills of Attainder, unlike that against Ex Post Facto laws, potentially reaches civil as well as criminal penalties.

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Economic crisis punches a hole in Swiss exports

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - Mar. 19 (News Report) - Swiss exports — ranging from cheese and chocolate to watches and medicines — dropped by almost a fifth at the start of the year, officials said Thursday.

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MBA Frayed

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New Republic - By Bradford Plumer - Mar. 18 (Special Report) - Business schools aren't, of course, primarily responsible for the implosion of global finance: On the list of culprits, they rank well below the bursting real-estate bubble, skyrocketing bank leverage, and the decline of regulatory oversight.

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